Neil Heywood 'feared for his safety' as strains grew around Bo Xilai, his powerful Chinese friend

New questions arise daily over the death of British businessman Neil Heywood
since the surprise ousting of Politburo grandee Bo Xilai in Chongqing.

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Bo Xilai, mayor of the city of Dalian until 2000, hired Neil Heywood him to teach his son English and he became close to the whole family - including Mr Bo’s wife, Gu Kailai, a lawyer who is believed to handle much of the family businessPhoto: AFP/GETTY

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Neil Heywood lived in an expensive home in an affluent Beijing suburb near the former Olympic rowing park with his Chinese wife LuluPhoto: SKY NEWS

The text message on the mobile phone screen was to the point: “Neil Heywood was killed”.

Sent anonymously in the middle of the night last February, it referred to the case of a British businessman found dead in a hotel room in the city of Chongqing, in South West China, three months earlier, apparently of natural causes.

Now the message to a Chinese investigative journalist from an unidentified number was suggesting he had been murdered.

The suspicion, another Chinese reporter revealed last week, was that Mr Heywood was a “Bai Shoutao” - literally a “white glove”, brokering a series of secretive business deals for a powerful Chinese politician not supposed to soil his hands with commerce.

On Saturday a startling new report surfaced that Mr Heywood had told friends in China that he feared for his safety after falling out with Gu Kailai, Mr Bo’s wife. Concerned that somebody in the family’s inner circle had betrayed them, she was said to have asked Mr Heywood to divorce his wife and swear an oath of loyalty, which he refused, according to the Wall Street Journal, the newspaper which broke the original story about Heywood’s death last week.

Whatever the truth of the claims, they have put Mr Heywood at the centre of a political storm in China and led to suggestions that the late 41-year-old Harrow-educated businessman may have been a British spy.

Disquiet in Britain’s expat community in Beijing about the official version of events - that the abstemious Mr Heywood may have been drinking heavily before his death - led the Foreign Office to ask the Chinese to reopen the case.

Now The Sunday Telegraph has learned that the Foreign Secretary William Hague is being personally briefed on the affair and, in the US, the Vice President Joe Biden has intervened after calls for a Congressional hearing into the ensuing events.

Heywood arrived in China more than a decade ago after graduating in international relations from Warwick University. His only previous business experience had been in an unsuccessful venture with his father, attempting to produce a “blind date auction” television show. There were no takers.

His break came when Bo Xilai, mayor of the city of Dalian until 2000, hired him to teach his son English and he became close to the whole family - including Mr Bo’s wife, Gu Kailai, a lawyer who is believed to handle much of the family business. It is this connection that is now at the centre of the intrigue.

Mr Bo’s tenure in Dalian was marked by the city’s phenomenal transformation into a modern metropolis fuelled by huge economic growth.

Its success propelled Mr Bo to election to the Chinese politburo and a post as minister of commerce. Helped by his father’s connections as a close friend of both Deng Xiaoping and Jiang Zemin, his career glittered until he became Communist party secretary in Chongqing, a megacity of 30 million people, where economic growth easily outstripped the already blistering national average.

It was a validation of the idea that private enterprise, welded to strict party control, could produce miraculous results.

Mr Bo’s micro-management extended to the songs that people sung and the television they watched. Under his rule, viewers were fed a diet of revolutionary dramas about the early years of the Communist party.

He played cannily both on nostalgia for the “good old days” before Chinese society was tainted by materialism, and on his image as an enemy of crime - even if some now claim that a campaign to destroy the mafia focused also on destroying his own business rivals.

While Mr Bo was rising though the Party ranks, Mr Heywood used his connection to bolster a consultancy business he started, helping British firms gain a foothold in China.

His firm, Heywood Boddington Associates, registered at his mother’s house in London, described itself as “a multi-discipline consultancy focusing on serving the interests of UK businesses in the People’s Republic of China”.

Set up in 2005, its website, shut down shortly before his death, quoted from The Art of War, the ancient Chinese book on military strategy that is also a favourite of Mr Bo’s. It says: “Know yourself. Know the other party. In a hundred battles, you will never be defeated.”

The firm warned: “China has endless powers to tantalise and amaze. But its ancient civilisation evolved almost entirely independently from the western world. With a business environment of legendary complexity, China’s ability to confound is no less formidable."

Part of Mr Heywood’s work involved undertaking due diligence on Chinese firms for Hakluyt, the Mayfair-based business intelligence firm set up by former MI6 officers. But despite suggestions of an involvement in espionage, the reality was different.

Western firms want to know all they can about those they are planning to do business with, especially when millions of pounds are at stake. Mr Heywood’s role, like others in the international information trade, was to compile dry reports on companies and individuals, searching out financial information and press reports to reassure investors.

Much of his own firm’s work appears to have involved promoting the manufacturers of children’s car seats and medical inhalers.

His business partner for five years Chris Boddington, now a director of PWC, the international consultancy firm, in China, last night refused to discuss his work with Heywood, issuing a terse “no comment”.

Heywood was highly successful. He lived in an expensive home in an affluent Beijing suburb near the former Olympic rowing park with his Chinese wife Lulu. Their young son and daughter attend the local branch of Dulwich College, one of Britain’s top schools, whose fees in China are up to £22,000 a year.

But last November this modern story of a Westerner making his fortune in China ended in tragedy.

After flying to Chongqing for a meeting, reportedly with Mr Bo or a member of his family, Mr Heywood, aged just 41, was found dead in his hotel room. A cursory medical examination suggested he had been drinking and had died of heart disease.

The Foreign Office gave consular help to his grieving family. With no foul play even hinted at, Heywood was swiftly cremated, apparently at his family’s request, and his sister flew to China to take his ashes back to Britain.

On February 5 everything changed when Chongqing’s police chief, Wang Lijun, walked into the US consulate in Chengdu, 200 miles away, and asked for protection. He allegedly told the Americans that his boss, Mr Bo, was behind Mr Heywood’s death and that his own life was now in danger after he had tried to investigate.

Mr Wang had been a key ally of Mr Bo in a war against organised crime and corruption which had seen around 2,000 detained, including government officials and police officers.

Now he apparently asked for asylum but, after wrangling between the consulate and Washington DC, was refused and forced to leave. His current whereabouts are unknown and Chinese reports say he is on leave due to a “health concern”.

Meanwhile an “open letter to the whole world”, purportedly by Mr Wang, surfaced on the internet. The letter attacked Mr Bo as a “hypocrite” and “the greatest gangster in China” and accused him of corruption.

It was most likely fake. But a month later Mr Bo, who admitted he may have “trusted the wrong person” in Mr Wang, was sacked as Chongqing Communist Party Secretary and from his other posts in the city. He too has not been seen in public since.

The latest revelations add to the intrigue over what may be the most serious split in China’s secretive leadership for 20 years. Mr Bo had been a candidate to join China’s top ruling body, the Politburo’s standing committee. Could the Wang scandal and Mr Heywood’s death have offered his rivals an opening to sideline him?

The ripples spread far and wide. His spectacular fall from grace sparked rumours throughout China of a military coup - fuelled by the lack of information about what lay behind it. On Saturday the authorities arrested six people and closed 16 websites for spreading the speculation.

Meanwhile in Washington the House of Representatives Committee on Foreign Affairs is demanding to know why such a senior Chinese official as Mr Wang was apparently turned away by US diplomats.

Vice President Joe Biden is among senior figures urging them not to hold public hearings, and officials are expected to refuse to answer questions on national security grounds.

Whatever the truth about Mr Bo and his family’s connections with Heywood, the allegations that the Briton may have been murdered are a shock to his family, who still believe his death was due to a heart attack.

His father and his paternal grandparents all died at an early age - and several friends in Britain say Mr Heywood “looked ill” in pictures taken before his death.

John Summers, Mr Heywood’s brother-in-law, said: : “As far as I’m aware the Foreign Office has not been in contact with any of Neil’s family about re-opening the case, it was their decision to do that as the family had accepted the verdict.

“He never mentioned any problems or worries. He had lived out there for quite a while and seemed happy.”

Mr Heywood’s 74-year-old mother Ann, who still lives in the Streatham family home where he grew up, said: “I loved Neil very much, a mother and son could hardly have been closer. We talked several times a week on the phone and if anything was worrying him he would tell me.

“It’s distressing having it all brought up again after four months. As far as I’m concerned it was, and still is, a closed case. The Foreign Office is looking into it again, but not at our request.

“It’s heartbreaking to even think there was foul play involved. He was very ambitious, had a lot of friends and business contacts and had a nice life in China.

“I went to China often to see him, I still do to see my daughter-in-law and grandchildren, and they were always very happy.

“I don’t know why these theories have surfaced now, I don’t know about any political motivation. As far as I’m concerned he died of a heart attack. It’s tragic, but nothing more.”